


swim good

by kairiolette



Category: Free!
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 07:58:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3642642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kairiolette/pseuds/kairiolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chigusa kind of teaches Kou how to swim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	swim good

Something shadows the sun from where it had been bathing Kou’s upturned face; she wrinkles her nose against the sudden absence of warmth. Pulling off her headphones and blinking her eyes open, Chigusa’s face starts to blur into focus; she peers down at Kou over the rim of her shades, looking exceptionally cunning. She had rolled over onto her stomach closer to Kou, halfway onto Kou's towel, her elbow resting on the thin patch of grass between them. The sun hides behind her hair—coiled on top of her head in its usual bun. Kou catches a strong whiff of suntan lotion that isn’t her own as well as the fainter tang of the popsicle Chigusa had just messily finished off.

“That reminds me,” Chigusa says, though neither of them have spoken for the past ten minutes or so. Her eyebrows raise in elegant arches, and she rests her chin on her fist, rather imposing as she leans over where Kou lies. Soft baby hair, taken up in a barely-there breeze, swirls around her forehead and frames her face. “I heard a rumor.”

Kou narrows her eyes and doesn’t deign to lift up onto her elbows, almost tugging her headphones back on. She lets her head rest back on her towel, pillowed by crumpled grass underneath. “You shouldn’t gossip, Hana-chan.”

“A rumor about you," she clarifies, and Kou opens her eyes once more to see Chigusa pursing her lips haughtily.

“Something I heard from a little flightless birdie,” she whispers, continuing like she’s about to reveal something scandalous. Kou really can’t imagine what. Chigusa leans into Kou again even closer, cupping her hand around her mouth though no one but Kou is there to read her lips. And Kou indulges her, curious enough to go along with her antics; she mirrors Chigusa, cupping her hand around her ear.

Chigusa’s a poor whisperer; her breath puffs too warm against the shell of Kou’s ear and makes her want to either shiver or push her away, back onto her own towel. She resists both urges after hearing what she actually has to say.

“Oh,” Kou says, pulling back, and Chigusa greets her with that expectant look, eyes wide and waiting for Kou to dish. “That’s true.”

Chigusa tries to act shocked, but she grins too easily, as if she knew it all along. She flops back onto her towel, arms spread, almost back-handing Kou's face. Kou bats her wrist away just in time.

"You, the swim club manager, of all people!" Chigusa says and sighs, a melodramatic and high-pitched commotion. Kou laughs and shrugs when Chigusa rolls over on her side to look at her again, eyebrows worried in disbelief. "Well, why not?"

"I prefer watching," Kou reasons after a little thought, trying to defend herself. She pushes up to sit cross-legged, her legs sticky with sunblock. Chigusa only laughs at this.

“And telling people what to do,” Chigusa snickers, shielding her eyes from the sun to look up at Kou, who pouts down at her.

“You make me sound like a tyrant,” she grumbles. But Chigusa is still, unfortunately for Kou, caught up on the whole Kou-can't-swim thing, face reddening as she racks her brain for something that must not be there. Kou almost tells her not to hurt herself, thinking that furiously on a summer day.

“How is it that your brother is on track to be an Olympic swimmer, but you can’t swim at all?” Chigusa asks, as blunt as ever, and Kou glares at her, but doesn’t really have a counterargument. Chigusa, as seems to be the pattern this afternoon, doesn’t wait for her to answer anyway.

"Why haven't you gotten one of the boys to teach you?” she suggests, "Or your brother?"

"Oniichan's not even in Japan—"

"—Or that boy who likes you—Mamoru-kun? Or his brother?"

"That’s not his name," Kou interjects, though she can’t quite recall what it actually is at the moment, “And I wouldn’t trust either of them to teach me like my brother could!”

Chigusa sits up with a dizzying speed, smile bright and alarming to Kou, at least.

“Do you trust me?”

She can see Chigusa's stained-blue tongue when she speaks.How can Kou say no to that? 

“You can swim, Hana-chan?” Kou wonders, and then wonders how it’s possible that she and Chigusa have never been to the pool together, or have never went in the water at the beach. In all their summers spent together! Well, they always have preferred sunbathing and people-watching, she supposes. Chigusa reaches across her for both her hands—hers are sticky and Kou hopes it’s because of her lotion, not the remnants of that blue-raspberry popsicle.

“Duh!” Chigusa exclaims, pulling both herself and Kou to their feet, though Kou had been quite content lounging on her towel for as long as the sun stayed out. She sees stars, standing upright for the first time in at least an hour. “I’ll teach you, let’s go!”

Chigusa makes quick work of rolling up her towel and slipping into her flip-flops, suddenly energetic after lazing around with Kou all day. They both are already wearing bathing suits underneath their tank tops and shorts, so it's not that much of a hassle, but Kou feels too sluggish even as she moves to pack up her own towel.

“Hana-chan,” she grumbles, stepping into her sandals despite herself, “I thought we were being lazy today.”

“We’ll be lazy,” Chigusa starts, and after grabbing both of their bags, locks her elbow with Kou’s, dragging her along like they’re going to be late to only-she-knows-where, “once you learn how to doggy paddle.”

+

The Iwatobi High pool, as expected for a summer holiday Sunday, is empty and off-limits, though both Chigusa and Kou figure the head manager of the one and only swim team has certain perks, including the right to hop the wire fence and use the pool whenever she pleases. Or, whenever her best friend pleases and chooses to drag her along. Chigusa jumps down from the other side of the fence after climbing it like some sort of sugar-rushed spider, and she lands on her feet with a full thud, kicking off her sandals and pulling her shirt up over her head in the same beat. Kou follows but takes her time with it; she figures her ascent up the wire fence is more like that of a sloth. A sloth who can’t swim and only kind of wants to learn. But the pool in front of them, Kou begrudgingly notices once she hops the fence, looks beyond refreshing, especially after they've built up a sweat from walking.

Chigusa stands with her hands on her hips in her frilly two piece when Kou reaches her; she's for some reason impatient as Kou takes her time in stripping down to her bathing suit. Kou kicks off her shorts and sandals as Chigusa squints down at her, eyes trailing her actions.

"That's a cute swimsuit, Hana-chan," Kou says, smiling pleasantly. Pastel lavender has always been a color that especially suits Chigusa. Chigusa looks down at herself, tugging on one of the purple ruffles at her hip. She frowns.

"Really?" she asks, "What's cute about it?"

"The color!" Kou laughs, because that's such a Hana-chan response to a compliment, "And the frilly parts."

Chigusa twists her lips, thinking far too seriously about an off-hand comment.

"Is it cute, or am I cute in it?" 

Kou rolls her eyes while Chigusa starts to smile. "Both, Hana-chan."

Kou has half a mind to push her into the pool, but before she can, Chigusa steps forward and removes her hair-tie, slipping it onto her onto her wrist. Her hair looks funny, billowed and puffing out like it still wants to be up on top of her head, and before Kou can laugh at her, Chigusa takes off—leaping, wahoo-ing, and cannonballing into the pool.

“It’s cold!” she gasps, laughing as she surfaces, and Kou crouches down to sit at the edge of the pool, plunging her feet in. Chigusa bobs under again, tilting her head back as she comes up for air so the water pushes her hair sleek back against her head. She rubs water away from her eyes, skin glistening as her shoulders shiver—see, Kou would much rather watch from solid ground. Before her eyes glaze over—they have a tendency to do that when she’s spectating—Chigusa dunks and emerges from the water once more, shaking droplets from her bangs and blinking them back from her eyelashes. She peers up at Kou, wading closer to where she sits.

“Kou-chan,” she says, though of course she already has Kou’s attention, “What’s my charm point?”                                                                                                    

She brings her elbows up and out on either side of her and curls her hands into fists, flexing, and a laugh escapes from behind Kou’s hand. She checks Chigusa out, and wants to say something like her hair because it’s pushed back from her forehead in a way Kou rarely sees. Instead she pretends to ponder it, reaching forward and wrapping her hands around either of Chigusa’s wrists. Her hands slide down soaked skin toward Chigusa’s elbows, and she squeezes experimentally.

“Forearms!” she declares, and Chigusa cackles, delighted, clapping her hands together. Kou feels the muscles flex beneath her hands.

“It must be from all that calligraphy I write,” she decides. Her bright grin turns wicked when she grabs, too swiftly for Kou to register it, both of Kou’s forearms in return and yanks. Kou wobbles and yelps before falling, her hands slapping down and all but clawing at Chigusa's shoulders. Chigusa catches her with a startled gasp and holds her up, like she only just remembered that Kou can't swim and forgot that she _can_ stand in four feet of water. The water, compared to the thick heat of the air, feels nearly polar and sends a shock of goosebumps up to Kou's shoulders. Kou pulls back from Chigusa to glare at her.

“Is this how you plan on teaching me, Hana-chan?” she growls, letting her hands fall from Chigusa’s shoulders as Chigusa floats onto her back, kicking her feet out of the water and back under.

“It’s hands-on learning,” she reasons, up to her chin submerged, and Kou can’t tell if she’s kidding. She doesn’t have long to debate it, because Chigusa dunks underwater once more with an exaggerated gasp and hold of breath, slipping beneath the surface like a sea serpent, until she emerges again behind Kou. She pulls herself up by gripping Kou’s shoulders, legs wrapping around Kou’s waist. Kou sighs, curling her hands down around Chigusa’s thighs to hold her up; she could have guessed Chigusa would forget all about teaching her how to swim as soon as they got in the pool. Chigusa weighs next to nothing, or a lot less than when she makes Kou give her piggyback rides on land. Kou ducks down, bending her knees to wet her shivery shoulders while Chigusa plays water-koala. Kou bets they have those in Australia, she’ll have to ask her brother.

“Hana-chan,” she starts, and she’s afraid to ask her to begin teaching her how to swim lest she make Kou somehow do laps around the pool while attached to her back.

“We’ll start with floating,” Chigusa decides, chipper once again, squeezing Kou in a hug before releasing her from her hold. The cold water against her uncovered back makes Kou's teeth chatter, but Chigusa’s hands find her shoulders again, tugging and easing her backward. Kou kicks her feet up, trusting Chigusa to push up at the small of her back with the flat of her hand. She makes a noise of encouragement when Kou lets her head fall back against the water, and Kou focuses on the timing of her breath rather than how low Chigusa’s expectations for her must be. She spreads her hands out, palms balancing on the surface.

Kou barely feels it at first, but fingers thread through where her ponytail sways suspended in the water.

“This will help you balance,” Chigusa claims, running her hand along the length of Kou’s tied-back hair so it, Kou would imagine, stands straight along the surface of the water. Kou feels a slight tug at her scalp when Chigusa reaches the tip of her ponytail; her hand repeats the motion. “Like a tail.”

Kou doesn’t know if she agrees with that logic, kicking herself back up into floating when Chigusa slacks in holding her up.

“This is how they started teaching Rei-kun to swim,” she says. Chigusa’s hand presses back where it should be and it’s warm; it helps her focus on not freezing and not sinking.

“Wasn't that a horrible failure?” Chigusa asks, and Kou chuckles sheepishly. Chigusa sighs, "That’s some team you got.”

“Good thing I have you as a teacher,” Kou says, and misses her with the sarcasm when Chigusa agrees enthusiastically. Kou giggles at her sudden confidence, eyes falling shut as Chigusa plays with her hair.

“Can you teach me butterfly, Hana-chan?” Kou asks, inspired by a striking vision of her showing off to Rin when he comes back to visit, or to Rei and the others at the next practice. Chigusa lets out an awkward choke of a laugh.

“I’m not that advanced,” she chides, and Kou feels another painless but sharp tug on her ponytail. “How about I just teach you how not to sink!”

“Doggy paddle is undignified,” Kou snaps. She kicks up again, letting herself float, letting her ears sink under the water. She can still hear Chigusa when she speaks, though it’s muted.

“Not knowing how to swim is undignified,” she returns, “And unsafe, for someone who’s always around pools!”

That, Kou knows better than anyone. Chigusa’s hand spots her at her back again, but Kou lets her feet touch to the floor, standing up straight. Her hair hangs heavy from her head, drenched with water. She has floated long enough.

“What next?” she prompts, hoping that Chigusa’s impromptu lesson will be finished before sunset so they can get something to eat afterward. Chigusa twists her lips. The tips of her hair swirl in the water about her shoulders.

“Um,” she looks around, thinking, until her eyes meet Kou’s expectant ones again, “Now, try swimming to me.”

“You didn’t teach me anything!” Kou says, watching as Chigusa wastes no energy treading water, the tip of her chin still submerged. Kou can’t even imagine where to start—she has watched the boys, but she never paid too much attention to their technique, at least not enough to emulate it.

“The best way to learn,” Chigusa starts, channeling their teacher and lifting a finger in the air, “is to do.”

With that she swims away on her back, head still above water, hair trailing in front of her in a fan of auburn. Kou watches as her legs kick beneath the water, like those of a frog, like Nagisa's when he swims his stroke. Her arms push water in toward her sides, and she propels herself backward—effortlessly, so it seems, which frustrates Kou. Chigusa reaches the opposite side of the pool and heaves herself out, shoulders quivering and entire body dripping, and she shifts around to lay on her stomach against the concrete, head pillowed on her arms right at the edge of the pool. She waves at Kou.

“From there,” she yells, and Kou looks around helplessly, resisting the temptation to stomp slow-motion through the water toward Chigusa rather than swim. Or maybe she can just drift there; the breeze is beginning to pick up as the sun goes down, after all, and maybe it’ll buoy her on over to Chigusa. She looks over at her again. Her hair rarely is ever down, but now it covers her shoulders and hangs around her face. Kou idly hopes she lets it dry like that, wavy and pushed back. “Come on, Kou!”

“How?!” Kou fusses, sinking to her shoulders in the water. She kicks her feet up behind her in experiment, expecting something magical to happen, for her to somehow stay above water and glide in it toward Chigusa. She doesn’t, though; it’s only a bit of ungraceful thrashing, and then nothing. She ends up standing in the water again right where she started.

“Don’t stop kicking your feet, and push your hands through the water!” Chigusa calls out to her, and Kou thinks, if it were that easy she’d be doing laps by now.

“Hana-chan,” she huffs. The distance between them—almost the entire length of the pool—hardly seems swimmable for someone who has never swum before.

“If you can swim to me from there,” Chigusa says, lifting her head from her arms and grinning as late orange sunlight soaks her face, “I’ll reward you with a prize!”

Kou can’t imagine what ‘prize’ Chigusa has in store for her, if there even is a prize, but she also can’t help that competitive drive she has—it's genetic, probably.

“Alright,” she says in a sigh, mostly to herself.

“Be more excited!” Chigusa scolds, trying to splash Kou from where she lies.

“Alright!” Kou tries again, making fists.

She recreates in her mind Chigusa’s swimming from earlier—Chigusa never set a time limit on her prize, after all, and Kou needs to think this through. The seemingly second-nature way she could ease onto her back, treading her arms and kicking her feet and keeping her head out water. But whenever Kou kicks up off her feet and tries to move forward, she feels her whole body begin to fall rather than fly along the surface of the water like Chigusa can, or like her brother and the other boys can.  

“Kou-chan, this doesn’t look like swimming!”

“Let me think!” Kou strokes her chin, thoughtful frown deepening. Rei, at first, could only move himself forward through his beloved butterfly stroke. For her, then—she doesn’t know the technique for butterfly, or any of the strokes, and neither does Chigusa beyond a glorified doggy-paddle or water-tread. She thinks back to when they first got into the pool, how Chigusa would swim away from Kou while still looking at her, moving her body mechanically to glide through the water on her back. Maybe Kou could find a way to swim like that.

“I shouldn’t get too caught up on theory,” Kou notes to herself, lest she end up like Rei after his first attempt to swim—at the bottom of the pool floor, and then screaming his woes at the sky. Anyway, if she doesn’t do this soon, they’ll be swimming in the dark. She turns her back to Chigusa, feet still planted on the floor of the pool, but not for long. Ignoring Chigusa’s curious gaze undoubtedly poking at her back, she doesn’t waste another second in taking a deep breath and pushing herself backward, feet lifting.

Water flows against the back of her neck, she clenches her teeth to avoid mouthfuls of chlorine. She lets her body take over, relying on some muscle memory transference effect to emulate what she had just seen Chigusa do, though a bit less refined and definitely more frantic. She thinks she’s moving—she can’t tell, her eyes are squeezed shut and she doesn’t want to risk looking over her shoulder at Chigusa. Her feet touch down to the floor a couple of times but she keeps herself up mostly; she swims. Backwards. 

This reminds her, vaguely, of a unit she and Chigusa had to do in gym class in middle school—they had to sit on these square-shaped scooters, using their feet to roll themselves along the ground and race. Before long, they discovered the easiest and fastest method was to roll themselves backward, looking over their shoulders to avoid collision, rather than forward and head-on. Chigusa had rolled over Kou’s fingers one session and Kou had to spend the next three periods in the nurse’s office, but that’s not the point Kou is trying to get to.

The point she _is_  trying to get to, where Chigusa hovers over the pool from the sidelines, has to be drawing close by now; the pool’s length is no small stretch for a beginner but she feels as though she has been crawling backward by increments for the past eternity. Kou hears Chigusa gasp, or maybe that’s just her, embarrassingly out of breath as she struggles to keep her head above water, to keep her hands and feet moving like she had just seen Chigusa do.

“Kou, float!” Chigusa calls to her as a reminder, advice as obvious as telling Kou not to forget to breathe—which, actually, Kou could probably use a reminder like that in this moment. She imagines Chigusa’s hand at the small of her back, pushing her up like she had before—Kou raises her hips, kicking her legs and flapping her arms. She must look like a distressed animal caught in a trap, but she taps off the floor once more to keep herself afloat and doesn’t do it again until she reaches Chigusa. Falling into a rhythm, her kicking times up with the flapping of her arms, her arm-flapping becomes less of a spasm and more of a stroke. She gasps, panting heavily, paddling herself slowly but surely, and she lets her head fall back against the surface, trusts her own body and sheer Matsuoka will to keep her above water. She starts to laugh, a little giddily; she’s actually swimming all on her own for the first time. If you could call it swimming.

“Backstroke!” she hears Chigusa say excitedly, sounding closer than she had before, “Amazing, Kou-chan!”

“This,” Kou manages through a hoarse gasp, falling in and out of the groove she had found, but still moving, floating, swimming. She continues darkly, “is not what backstroke looks like.”

Chigusa laughs, and Kou barely hears it over her splashing. It seems much longer than it is, when Kou feels Chigusa’s hand on her shoulder, halting her from swimming— _swimming_ —into the wall. Kou stands up, chest heaving, damp clumps of hair hanging in front of her face, and she grins as Chigusa spins her around by the shoulders. She wipes wet hair back from Kou’s forehead as Kou catches her breath. Kou smiles through her labored breathing, feeling oddly accomplished.

“I can’t believe you swam backwards!” Chigusa says as Kou cools down, teasing her good-naturedly. “So weird, Kou-chan!”

“You were swimming backwards before, too,” Kou argues, “That’s how I got the idea.”

Chigusa laughs at her answer, brushing Kou’s damp bangs behind her ear again, and Kou has barely caught her breath when she loses it all over again—Chigusa ducks down, fingers curled in her hair, and presses her lips to Kou’s parted panting ones for a second that feels like a minute that still doesn’t feel long enough. She pulls back again, resting her chin on her folded arms, eyes owlish as Kou blinks up at her.

“Your prize,” she explains. Kou licks her lips, tasting chlorine, but they tingle as if scalded by a stronger chemical.

“That’s it?” Kou says. She means she wants more than a peck, but Chigusa twists her lips in thought.

“Well, I can treat you to ice cream after this, too,” she suggests, and Kou shakes her head, smiling, chin tilting up toward Chigusa’s as if drawn magnetically. Chigusa’s fingers still tangle in her hair. “As long as you treat me back.”

 _Your tongue is still blue from your popsicle,_ Kou wants to say, reprimandingly, but instead; “Like a Dutch date.”

Chigusa blinks down at her again, licking her lips in a way Kou may not have noticed before. She smiles, her fingers curl Kou’s hair behind her ear again, and Kou takes that as a yes, exactly.

“You can swim!” she exclaims so happily that Kou feels a little embarrassed.

“Barely,” she laughs, _and no thanks to you_ , she wants to add, but Chigusa is far too thrilled for her. Moral support may have played a role in her getting from point A to point B without drowning, Kou supposes. And her prize wasn’t too shabby, either, though Kou thinks she might deserve a little more.

“The next step is to make a girl’s swim club at Iwatobi High,” Chigusa decides, tone determined but she winks at Kou, “Me and you as captains.”

Kou, starting to get cold, tries to keep her teeth from chattering. Chigusa’s hands in her hair only worsen the goosebumps.

“That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?” Kou asks, but she briefly imagines what that would be like.

“So is this,” Chigusa says, and Kou is being kissed again— _how smooth, Hana-chan,_ she thinks, nearly swooning, feeling lighthearted. And then she thinks quick, her hands find Chigusa’s slowly-drying hair and the back of her neck, holding her close as she leans up into the kiss, making the most of her prize.

 


End file.
